I would invite any DCer to alt.comp.freeware to carry on or to surplus this discussion in an unmoderated, open forum. Perhaps you can get Bear Bottoms attention, I am having no success, not that there is any surprise in that.

There are 2 posters on ACF who are most prolific in their posts against (and about) BearBottoms purported activities and various character flaws and Franklin is one of them. FYI he is permanently killfiled as I have never seen a worthwhile post from him (plenty of trash talk though)

The hypocrisy in this statement is profound. On one hand, you claim to killfile, never post and lurk. In the other hand. you claim, falsely, a complete lie, that Franklin does no faith to ACF. Again, a complete lie of which you have no right to comment in the first place.

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FWIW, I've been a long time lurker in ACF and can't say as I've ever seen a post from Silverstein.

That should about sum up your worth and I shall refuse to comment any further.

Ummm, your link to the Iran Contra page has no mention of mr. Bottoms. And where are the URLs to articles where he "admits to being a cocaine smuggler"? Where are the links (to reliable media) that shows he has anything to do with the death of anyone?

You are the one making the accusations, so you should be providing links (to reliable media). "Use google" or "read usenet" doesn't apply. Before you do that, I see your posts as particularly nasty slander.

And even if those accusations are correct, it really doesn't have much to do with his site. As others have mentioned, if you were only criticizing the quality of his reviews (and actually giving some examples of sloppy work), it would be a different thing. But DC isn't really the forum for personal attacks like this.

Well this thread got ugly fast. Not really the kind of thing we like to see on this forum.

Numerous people wiser than I have suggested we not just close but delete this thread.

My inclination with such things however is just to let everyone have their say so they don't feel like they have been censored or prohibited from saying something they feel is vitally important to add to the conversation.

I think all sides of this argument have been made repeatedly (and mostly in a non-productive fashion). So i think closing the thread was a good idea. As for deleting it.. let's see if we can just let it alone and those searching for info on the bear bottoms site can come read this discussion and see the differing points of view and decide for themselves.

Speaking personally, I think the first original post on the thread talking about the site is clearly relevant to DC interested in software, and so there is no reason not to leave it on the forum.

The follow up info from silverstein informing people of possible illegal/immoral/unethical activities of the site owner is also arguably relevant to readers, who might want to avoid websites run by people who they view as engaged in activities they find morally unacceptable. Some people will care, some people won't.

However, i don't think anyone helps their case by having these long drawn out back and forths -- it just makes everyone look bad.

So at the moment my inclination is to just leave the thread locked.. anyone who believes strongly it should be deleted can message me and the forum moderators can discuss whether they believe it would be the right thing to do.